99% took footage shot by four directors and five co-directors all over the country, interspersed with commentary that highlighted the footage.

Overall rating: 3 out of 4

Before the main feature, we watched a great short – 30% (Women and Politics in Sierra Leone). In about 10 minutes, it highlighted three women in Sierra Leone who, despite threats and the resistance of the current power structure, are fighting to get the percentage of women in government. The thing that stood out to me was the woman who talked about the need to educate women about how to organize, raise funds, prepare their families for the character assassination common in politics, create actionable agendas, etc. I wanted her to go to Egypt and to Wall Street and talk to the organizers of those movements, since she had a much more clear understanding than they did of how one is effective in politics.

As for the feature – before seeing the film, I had read a blurb in Variety that called it shapeless, but I didn’t feel that in the film. Given that there were four directors and five co-directors, the film showed more narrative cohesion than yesterday’s offering “The Square.”

The film started with the occupation of Zuccotti Park, and talked about how the protesters organized themselves, but early in the film it still wasn’t clear what the protesters wanted. Several times, people talked about their individual circumstances, but “remedy my plight” does not necessarily translate to actionable policies. There was one woman whose house was being foreclosed, but nobody talked about amending foreclosure laws.

The separate pieces filmed all over the country, stitched together by thoughtful, coherent commentary by Naomi Wolf, Matt Taibbi,  and Richard Wilkinson, who talked about the organization of the movement, its aims and its victories and defeats. At the end, as a sort of ray of hope, the film offered statistics citing the number of political entities that have enacted legislation to repeal the Citizens United decision, the main cause of the current political atmosphere.

But the film didn’t change my mind about the Occupy movement as a whole, which was nicely summed up about halfway through the film by Naomi Wolf who pointed out that movements without a central leader have never succeeded.

It also brought to mind for me the number of people who, after 9/11, thought that passing the Patriot Act was the right thing to do. They were too happy to give away their civil rights in exchange for protection from terrorists. Except now that same Patriot Act is being used to justify the police actions that put down many of the Occupy demonstrations. And people are all too happy to shop at Target, Walmart, etc., but don’t understand why their jobs have dried up and their local economies have gone under. I’m hoping that more attention to the sickness of whole economic ecosystem will get people to change the behaviors that feed the corporations.